Shirburn Castle: another Macclesfield story

THE MOST secret moated castle in England stands empty and forlorn, its future unknown and undecided after more than seven centuries of occupation. The ancestral portraits have been stripped from the walls, the books emptied in their thousands from the library shelves and elegant Georgian furniture removed by the lorryload.

Yet the castle remains as romantic as ever, perfectly reflected in the still waters of a moat which laps the walls as closely as a Venetian canal. Shirburn in Oxfordshire, at the foot of the Chiltern hills, is like Bodiam in Kent: square and symmetrical with circular towers at the corners and built when French invasion threatened in the 1370s and 1380s. Like the best medieval castles it can be entered only by means of a drawbridge.

Last month, the Earl of Macclesfield, the 9th of his line to live here, departed, evicted as a result of a court order secured by his relatives. . . .

Alas, the castle is in disrepair, and its time-capsule interior apparently was never properly documented prior to being emptied out (although one hopes Sotheby's might have taken some photographs before the removal crews arrived). From the Times.

Posted by David on January 18, 2005 7:58 AM